Welcome to the latest edition of the Developer Shed newsletter!
If you've been job hunting for a while and want to make productive
use of your time, you might consider acquiring a new, marketable
skill. The slide show we're highlighting this week from eWeek
lists eight skills that don't require certification and are very
much in demand. Take a break from polishing your resume and hunting
down job listings; if you already have some of the skills listed,
you might want to put them front and center at your next interview.

You're reading a shorter newsletter this week because Monday was Labor Day here in the US, but we came back from the holiday rested and raring to go. In fact, we wrapped up two PHP series on Dev Shed this week. If you're more interested in Microsoft-related technologies, you'll want to check out the articles on ASP Free; we covered Windows Server 2008 and the software and hardware tools any Windows administrator should have in his or her toolbox.

Website designers and developers reading Dev Articles this week will learn more about the jQuery JavaScript library, and how to tweak their Active Client Pages to make browsers respond to them appropriately. Dev Hardware readers got their game on this week with our review of the latest Wolfenstein release, and considered which laptop they should buy for work or school.

SEO professionals reading SEO Chat caught the second of a three-part series on moving your Blogger blog to WordPress and your own domain. They also picked up some great tips for writing online copy. For those just getting their feet wet with their own web sites, Dev Mechanic explained how to simplify your page design, and why it's important.

But wait, there's more. Codewalkers continued its current ongoing series on the CodeIgniter PHP framework. Web Hosters discussed why reseller web hosting seems to be becoming more popular now. And of course, you'll find plenty of great content created by our visitors on Scripts and Tutorialized.

Rational
Build Forge Express eKit
Rational Build Forge Express Edition is an automation framework
that packages the latest enterprise-grade technologies into
a reliable, flexible and robust configuration designed and
priced specifically for small to midsize businesses. The new
Rational Build Forge Express eKit provides you with valuable
resources - including a case study, podcast, demo, and articles
- to help you increase staff productivity, compress development
cycles and deliver better software, fast.Learn
more.

Cleaning up Array Elements, POST and GET Requests with Filters in
PHP 5
by Alejandro Gervasio, 2009-09-09

Welcome to the final episode of a series that shows you how to use
filters in PHP 5. Made up of nine parts, these articles show you how
to utilize the numerous checking filters that come with the filter
library. You can use them to thoroughly validate the incoming data
handled by your PHP programs, without having to spend a long time
coding custom functions or class methods.
Read the full article.

Using Static Methods to Validate Data with Helpers in PHP 5
by Alejandro Gervasio, 2009-09-08

Welcome to the conclusion of an eight-part series on building helpers
in PHP 5. It's been a long journey, modifying our helper class to
make it do what we want it to. Finally, in this last part, we'll put
the finishing touches on our validation class so that it functions
properly, without the need to spawn helper objects.
Read the full article.

Flex Array Collection Sort and Filtering
by Keith Lee, 2009-09-03

It's not unusual to need to write an application that can filter and
sort a list of items based on user input. Maybe your e-commerce shop
offers a variety of notebooks from different companies, and you want
visitors to be able to sort or filter your selection. Combining Flex
with ActionScript allows you to create such an application with a
minimum amount of hassle (and code), as you'll see in this article.
Read the full article.

System administrators always have their preferences when it comes
to software and tools. Most utilities help them to accomplish routine
tasks, or to identify possible flaws, and thereafter fix them with
ease. Throughout this article we will recommend a bit more than a
dozen applications that can be found almost certainly (or their variations,
nonetheless) in most Windows sysadmins' toolboxes.Read
the full article.

Around six years ago when Windows Server 2003 was the best server
operating system that Microsoft ever produced, lots of enthusiasts
and IT pros started to convert their setups into full-fledged workstations.
Following in their footsteps, an entire crowd did the same. In this
article we're going to work with Windows Server 2008, which is an
entirely different beast, even though it's based on Vista code. Let's
make it work!
Read the full article.

At the beginning of the year 2008, when Windows Server 2008 hit the
shelves, it was considered the most mature operating system that Microsoft
had ever created. Come to think of it, the successor was from the
year 2003 - that's five years of development! Windows Server 2008
has already received two service packs, and now, roughly a year and
a half later, we're already playing around with the second release
(R2) of Windows 2008.Read
the full article.

Focusing and Blurring Elements with the jQuery JavaScript Library
by Alejandro Gervasio, 2009-09-09

If you're a web designer who's looking for a JavaScript library
that lets you develop powerful client-side applications by using a
friendly programming interface, then I have great news for you. This
series of articles gets you started using the most relevant features
that comes packaged with the jQuery JavaScript framework. You'll be
able to get the most out of this useful piece of software in a very
short time. This is the fifth article in an eight-part series.
Read
the full article.

ACP and Browsers: Setting up an Example
by Chrysanthus Forcha, 2009-09-08

n this and the next part of this five-part series, we look at the
code for a simple example of Active Client Pages that uses Chrys's
Approach. We shall use this example to demonstrate how browsers respond
to ACP. This example was described in the previous part of the series.
To save time and writing space, I will not repeat the description
here.
Read
the full article.

In this tenth part of a twelve-part series on Chrys's approach to
Active Client Pages, we look at the factors that gave rise to the
window phase. If you want to better understand this technology that
allows your web pages to at least appear to load more quickly for
your visitors, keep reading.
Read the full article.

Welcome to the second chapter of a series that shows you how
to create table rulers with CSS and JavaScript. This series provides
you with a bunch of useful pointers that hopefully will get you started
incorporating appealing table rulers into your own web sites with
only minor hassles.
Read
the full article.

Today we will review two more laptops you may want to check out before
you decide on a final purchase for your back to school or work needs.
Both of today's offerings come from Hewlett-Packard. We will begin
with the less expensive HP Pavilion dv3-2155mx and end with the pricier
HP TouchSmart tx2-1275dx.
Read the full article.

Wolfenstein
for the Xbox 360by wubayou, 2009-09-08

Is Wolfenstein a familiar name to you? If the answer is yes, then
you'll definitely want to keep reading. If you've been waiting patiently
since 2001 for the next part in this first person shooter to come
out, wait no longer: it's here, it's cool, and we're reviewing it
today.
Read the full article.

Madden
NFL 10 for PS3
by wubayou, 2009-09-04

It's the time of the year that many sports fans so anxiously await:
fall and the NFL season. No offense to baseball, basketball, or hockey,
but nothing quite compares to the excitement that NFL football can
bring to homes on Sunday afternoons and Monday nights. With the NFL
season also comes the annual release of one of the video game industry's
top franchises: Madden NFL football from EA Sports. Today we'll be
taking a close look at this latest release.Read
the full article.

HP
w2558hc and Planar PX2611wby wubayou, 2009-09-03

Are you looking to upgrade to a flat panel LCD monitor? Today we'll
be reviewing two that are definitely easy on the eyes (though possibly
not the budget), the HP w2558hc and the Planar PX2611w. Both have
a lot to offer the discriminating user.
Read the full article.

Web copy should do three things, and avoid doing one very important
thing. In this article we'll show you what you need to do to make
your copy sing, and your visitors sit up and take notice.
Read the full article.

Move Your Blogger Blog to WordPress: Getting Content on a New Host
by Codex-M, 2009-09-08

If you've been with Blogger for a while, have your own domain
name and are ready to move to something bigger and better, keep reading.
This is the second part of a three-part series that will help you
move your blog to WordPress.
Read the full article.

Most of us already know that web hosting is the practice of using
an Internet server to link websites stored on a hard drive to the
Internet. All websites across the Internet are hosted on such Internet
servers. There are countless web hosts that offer a myriad of services,
from dedicated support of a single website to mass public offerings
of small websites crowded onto single servers. Many companies are
now looking at reselling web hosting in order to earn additional revenue
during this recession.Read the full article.

What
is Cybersquatting?
by Joe Eitel, 2009-09-02

Cybersquatting, also known as "domain squatting," is a practice
that has gained an incredible amount of volume in the past two decades
with the rise of the Internet. Cybersquatting is essentially when
any individual purchases a domain name that is not related to their
business or personal interests with the intention of achieving financial
gain through the popularity of the domain's name.Read the full article.

Multiple
Data Center Hosting
by Joe Eitel, 2009-08-26

What exactly is multiple data center hosting? Why does it exist? Is
it expensive? Can it help your business? Should you even be looking
into it? These questions and more will be answered by this article.Read the full article.

Check
out the amazing tutorials fromIBM developerWorks
and see what all the buzz is about!

Hello
World: WebSphere Service Registry and RepositoryManage,
govern, and share services across your organization by using
WebSphere Service Registry and Repository. Follow the hands-on
exercises to learn how to navigate the Web interface to publish,
find, reuse, and update services.

Building
JavaScript applications with JSEclipseUsing
JSEclipse, JavaScript programmers now have their own Eclipse
plug-in that provides many important features to aid in the
development of JavaScript applications. JSEclipse gives JavaScript
developers the same ease of use that Eclipse has been providing
in the Java language and others for years. Learn to use this
tool, while creating a colony of evolving "creatures"
on your page.

Build
Web services with transport-level security using Rational
Application Developer V7, Part 1: Build Web services and Web
services clientsBuild
secure Web services with transport-level security using IBM
Rational Application Developer V7 and IBM WebSphere Application
Server V6.1. Follow this three-part series for step-by-step
instructions about how to develop Web services and clients,
configure HTTP basic authentication, and configure HTTP over
SSL (HTTPS). This first part of the series walks you through
building a Web service for a simple calculator application.
You generate and test two different types of Web services
clients: a Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) client
and a stand-alone Java client. You also handle user-defined
exceptions in Web services.

Application
development for the OLPC laptopThe
XO laptop (of the One-Laptop-Per-Child initiative) is an inexpensive
laptop project intended to help educate children around the
world. The XO laptop includes many innovations, such as a
novel, inexpensive, and durable hardware design and the use
of GNU/Linux as the underlying operating system. The XO also
includes an application environment written in Python with
a human interface called Sugar, accessible to everyone (including
kids). Explore the Sugar APIs and learn how to develop and
debug a graphical activity in Sugar using Python.

Test
terminal-based applications with Rational Functional TesterRegression
testing -- in which code is thoroughly tested to ensure that
changes have not produced unexpected results -- is an important
part of any development process. But many testing environments
neglect the terminal-based applications that still form the
backbone of many industries. In this tutorial, you'll learn
how the Rational Functional Tester Extension for Terminal-Based
Applications works with other Rational Functional Tester to
help test terminal-based applications quickly and easily.

Actionscript Mouse Events
Learn to respond to different mouse events like clicks and hovers.Read
the tutorial.

Fireworks
We are going to learn to use the brush tool to create fireworks.Read
the tutorial.

Simple
Photo Flash Menu
See how to create simple Flash menu. Simplistic tutorial and fun
to read. Read
the tutorial.

Tips on PhpLib
The pHpLib template makes it very easy to create a website. It is
based on a template. Read
the tutorial.

Key controls
This Flash tutorial will teach you about the basic key controls.Read
the tutorial.

Replace a String in a TXT File Replace strings in TXT files through PHP.Read
the tutorial.

Want to Earn Cash & Fame Writing
for ASP Free

Developer Shed is actively seeking fresh, new writing talents for our
Microsoft Windows technology site. We're looking for Windows
programmers, system administrators, and more to provide our readers with the latest, up-to-date techniques and strategies.

Here's your chance to earn some cash, gain some exposure, and beef up your resume! If you would like to join our team, email your name, a
description of your qualifications, and the topic areas you would like
to cover to contact_editor@developershed.com.

When you look at your Web pages, what do you see? Is your design
streamlined, simple and cohesive? Can you easily find all the different
features offered on your site? If you find that you're more confused
than impressed by your own pages, it's time to think about simplifying
page design for your space on the Web.
Read
the full article.

No
One Diggs My Content
by KC Morgan, 2009-09-04

You've got the button in place. You've got the keyword phrases
popping in the paragraphs. You've a got a great love for your content.
So…why doesn't anyone else seem to like your articles and blog posts
enough to cast a vote? Wondering why no one Diggs your content or
votes on those words you slave to bring forth? The problem might not
be in your writing at all.
Read
the full article.

Regardless of its remarkable features, including its outstanding
online documentation, a flat learning curve and a strict application
of the Model-View-Controller pattern, the CodeIgniter PHP framework
still lacks an important characteristic that other competitors have
already implemented in the form of native libraries. In this eight-part
series, of which this is the fifth, we go some way toward remedying
this oversight.
Read the full article.

Fetching
Database Rows with a Model for the CodeIgniter PHP Framework
by Alejandros Gervasio, 2009-09-02

Welcome to the third part of a series that walks you through
building a generic model for the CodeIgniter PHP framework. Comprised
of seven tutorials, this series shows you in a step-by-step fashion
how to create a useful abstract PHP class that will allow you to fetch,
insert, update and delete rows in a specified database table very
easily by using only a few child models.
Read the full article.

Welcome to the second part of an eight-part series on building
a generic model for the CodeIgniter PHP framework. In this part, I
will expand the functionality of the "AbstractModel" class
we created in the first part by adding a couple of handy methods to
it. Keep reading for the full details.
Read the full article.

Breathalyzer tests can save lives by getting drunk drivers off the road. Researchers at the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute in Haifa, Israel, have developed a new breath test that could also save lives. In this case, instead of checking to see whether you've had too much to drink, the test discovers whether or not you have lung cancer.

While breath tests for lung cancer currently exist, this one would be much simpler, current tests require additional steps to improve detection. Hossam Haick, the lead author of the paper reporting on the research, noted that their device, which is portable, could not only tell lung cancer patients from healthy controls, but also could identify different types of lung cancer. This information could help doctors when planning a course of treatment.

The test uses a sensor made from gold nanoparticles to measure levels of volatile organic compounds in a person's breath. Haick's test is fast and affordable, and he estimates that it could save millions of lives a year. Best of all, this could be just the beginning. "The potential exists for using the proposed technology to diagnose other conditions and diseases, which could mean additional cost reductions and enhanced possibilities to save lives," Haick says.

The same researchers who brought us the robot controlled by rat brain cells are aiming their sites a little higher. Kevin Warwick and Ben Whalley at the University of Reading, UK, grew 300,000 rat neurons in a nutrient broth and used them to steer a small wheeled robot. Now they're looking at doing the same thing with human brain cells instead.

Before you start worrying about an army of robots commanded by a mad scientist through brain waves, the team notes that their setup could be used to study the effects of neurological diseases such as epilepsy. They note that the way groups of neurons sometimes behave giving out electrical bursts in unison may bear some resemblance to what happens during an epileptic seizure. If so, finding ways to change this behavior in culture could lead the way to therapies for this disease.

The researchers plan to start the project once they complete their work with rat cells, and note that this will be the first time that human cells are used to control a robot. Initially, they plan to study the differences, if any, in the way robots controlled by rat and human neurons behave. In particular, We'll be trying to find out if the learning aspects and memory appear to be similar, noted Warwick.